Making History

Here are the Valero Alamo Bowl highlights you’ll see most frequently in the bowl’s marketing materials:

– The Valero Alamo Bowl has produced three of the Top 5 Most-Watched Non-BCS Bowl Games in ESPN history including the #1 and #2 most-watched games.

– The record-setting offensive performance from Baylor and Washington in 2011 Valero Alamo Bowl marked the sixth game in the last seven years where the outcome wasn’t decided until the last three minutes.

– Four of the last six Valero Alamo Bowls have featured capacity crowds.

And here are a couple of stats we leave off our tout sheet:

– Since 2001, the Valero Alamo Bowl has featured only one Top 25 match-up. Eight of those games included at least one 6 or 7 win team.

– The Valero Alamo Bowl has never had a game matching up two 9+ win teams.

If you’re a glass half full guy like me, you feel the latter stats make the former ones more impressive. Both San Antonio and the teams we selected have stepped up to deliver exciting, well-watched games in front of capacity crowds.

For those you’re asking if we’ll ever match-up Top 25 teams with 9+ wins I have a prediction. With our increased payout comes access to better teams (thank you Valero) and that will be evident when the teams take the field this Saturday, December 29.

For 2012 and 2013, we’ll again match-up the #1 Pac-12 team vs. the #2 Big 12 team after the BCS selections. Going into Week #9, the Pac-12 and Big 12 combine to place five teams in the BCS Top 10: Kansas State #3, Oregon #4, Oregon State #7, Oklahoma #8 and USC #9. When you add in #14 Texas Tech, #17 Stanford, #19 West Virginia and #23 Texas that means our two partner conferences have nine in the BCS Top 25.

So even if each conference places two in the BCS, the Valero Alamo Bowl would have a choice of Top 25 teams if this pattern holds up. Here are the most recent media projections: